Aspectos abióticos

Light verbs in Hindi/Urdu appear to make a functional contribution to the sentence, as they signal the inception or completion of an event (among other things). For these reasons, light verbs have often been classed as a type of auxiliary. However, there is good evidence that Hindi/Urdu does possess auxiliaries, and that light verbs are syntactically and distributionally distinct from them in a number of ways.6

First it should be noted that the ordering within the Hindi/Urdu verbal complex is strict, and requires a distinction to be made between main verbs, light verbs, the passive (formed with ‘go’), the progressive auxiliary, and the ‘be’ auxiliary.

(7) Main verb (light verb) (passive) (progressive) (be auxiliary)

There are three uncontroversial auxiliaries in Hindi/Urdu, as shown in (8).7 (8) Urdu Auxiliaries Form ho to be Pres/Fut/Impf/Perf Past th-a/i/e/ι~ rah Progressive

(Orig. 'stay') (Fut. Impf. only special morphology) Perf. Pres./Past/Prog. be (Orig. 'stand') Past All others

Meaning Inflection Defective cells

If one considers (8), it can be seen that the auxiliaries have defective paradigms and do not inXect according to all possible tenses and aspects in the verbal system; in fact, they function to create a number of the tense/aspect meanings in the language. On the other hand, true ‘light’ verbs are not a subclass of the tense/aspect system in this way—they inXect according to all tenses and aspects possible in the language.

From a syntactic point of view, it can be shown that auxiliaries and light verbs have distinct syntactic properties with respect to (at least) case marking, reduplication, and topicalization. In the following subsections, we demon- strate each of these diagnostics in turn.

6.3.1 Case

Urdu/Hindi is a split-ergative language: ergative subjects only appear in the perfect tenses (see Davison 1999 for a very detailed discussion). However, even

6 Much of the material in this section duplicates argumentation in Butt and Geuder (2001). 7 Modals are ignored for the purposes of this discussion, as they function more like main verbs.

in the presence of perfect morphology, the verb’s lexical speciWcation is important because only (di)transitive verbs allow ergative case on the subject in the Wrst place. In the case of complex predicates, it is possible for there to be a mismatch between the transitivity of the main verb and the light verb. Interestingly, it is the transitivity properties of the light verb that determine the possibility of ergative case marking in this case (see Butt 1995).8

In example (9), the transitive main verb ‘write’ carries perfect morphology, and therefore structurally requires ergative case on the subject. However, in a complex predicate construction, ‘write’ can be paired up with one of at least two types of V2: the unaccusative light verb ‘fall’ disallows ergative case in general, while the light verb ‘take’ requires it. The examples in (10) show that the case marking of the subject is dependent on the requirements of the light verb, rather than those of the main verb on its own.

(9) Us¼ne/vo xAt lKkh-a

Pron.Obl_{¼Erg/Pron.Nom letter.M.Nom write-Perf.M.Sg} ‘He wrote a letter.’

(10) a. Us¼ne/vo xAt lKkh

pAr
-a Pron.Obl¼Erg/Pron.Nom letter.M.Nom write fall-Perf.M.Sg ‘He fell to writing a letter.’

b. Us¼ne/_{vo xAt lKk}h

li-ya

Pron.Obl¼Erg/Pron.Nom letter.M.Nom write take-Perf.M.Sg ‘He wrote a letter (completely).’

If we think of case marking as being dependent on the lexical/argument structural properties of individual verbs, as is usual, then the relevance of the light verb here is somewhat surprising. At the very least, it shows that the light verb does not have the status of an auxiliary, whose contribution to the possibility of ergative case marking is entirely restricted to the perfect vs. non-perfect distinction.

8 Mahajan (2001) points out some exceptional cases where the light verb alone does not determine the possibility of ergative case-marking, but instead the transitivity of the resulting form. (In the general case, the transitivity of the resulting V-V structure is determined by the light verb so that the two proposals are indistinguishable.) Mahajan’s data do not cast doubt on our claim that the light verb is crucially implicated in argument structure and case-licensing, but they do highlight the fact that it is the combination of the two verbal pieces that is important, and that the combinations are not trivially calculable on the basis of lexical notations. This idea is very much in the spirit of the proposals to be made in this chapter—we are attempting to give a precise account of the way in which verbal heads combine and the syntax that underlies the argument structure properties that we Wnd.

6.3.2 Reduplication

DiVerences between verbal complexes can also be found with respect to reduplication. In complex predicates the light verb, the main verb, or both may be reduplicated (see Fitzpatrick-Cole (1994; 1996) for a detailed study on Bengali; see Abbi (1992) for a general discussion of reduplication in South Asian languages). Example (11) below shows the reduplication of the light verb ‘go’ to give an ‘over and over again’ interpretation.

(11) a. vo so ja-ti th-i

Pron.Nom sleep go-Impf.F.Sg be.Past-Sg.F ‘She to used to go to sleep.’

b. vo so ja-ti va-ti th-i

Pron.Nom sleep go-Impf.F.Sg go.Redup-Impf.F.Sg be.Past-Sg.F ‘She used to keep going to sleep (at inopportune moments).’ In contrast, it is not possible to reduplicate an auxiliary in this way. Example (12) shows the ungrammaticality that results from trying to reduplicate the progressive auxiliary, while (13) is an example of an unsuccessful ‘be’ auxiliary reduplication.

(12) a. vo so rAh-i th-i

Pron.Nom sleep Prog-F.Sg be.Past-Sg.F ‘She was sleeping.’

b. vo so rAh-i vah-i th-i

Pron.Nom sleep Prog-F.Sg Prog-Redup be.Past-Sg.F ‘She was sleeping.’

(13) a. vo so-ti th-i

Pron.Nom sleep-Impf.F.Sg be.Past-Sg.F ‘She used to sleep.’

b. _{vo so-ti t}h

-i sˇ-i

Pron.Nom sleep-Impf.F.Sg be.Past-Sg.F be.Redup ‘She used to sleep.’

Once again, this diagnostic shows that the light verb patterns more like an ordinary main verb than the grammaticalized auxiliary does: both light verbs and main verbs have the level of prosodic and semantic autonomy required for reduplication.

6.3.3 Topicalization

With regard to topicalization, a main verb can always be topicalized away from a light verb, as shown in example (14a), where ‘sleep’ has been fronted, stranding the light verb ‘go’. In contrast, the very same main verb ‘sleep’ cannot be fronted/topicalized away from a cluster of auxiliaries, as the un- grammaticality of (14b) shows (cf. Mohanan 1994).

(14) a. so to bAcca ga-ya

sleep Top child.M.Sg.Nom go-Perf.M.Sg ‘The child has gone to sleep.’

b. _{so to bAcca rAh-a h«}

sleep Top child.M.Sg.Nom Prog-M.Sg be.Pres.3.Sg ‘The child is sleeping.’

Once again, the inability of auxiliaries to strand under topicalization seems to correlate with their highly dependent and functional nature. This defect- iveness is, however, strikingly absent with the ‘light’ verb.

To summarize: there is good evidence that light verbs form a distinct subclass, both inXectionally and syntactically, as opposed to pure auxiliaries in this language. Any analysis which conXates the two types of construction is missing a substantial set of syntactic, semantic, and morphological general- izations.